Wednesday, April 6, 2011

RECYCLE and REUSE!

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I save EVERYTHING! Well, a LOT of stuff. I figure I can use "it" for something! Some of my favorite things to save are jars and other containers. Here are just a few containers that I recycle/reuse!

These are glass peanut butter jars. I use these a LOT! Here I have pan drippings from Teriyaki Chicken. FYI, I refrigerate it, and the fat solidifies at the top. Then I just scoop it off and throw it out. What's left, I put in a plastic cottage cheese container--that I recycled-- and add more chicken pan drippings when I get more! Then I use it for soup stock! The second jar has Italian salad dressing in it. These jars are also great for storing gifts like hot fudge sauce, flavored coffees, etc.!

pan drippings, Italian salad dressings

These brown bottles are a fairly new find. One of the supermarkets carries their soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce in these brown glass bottles! Hey! PERFECT for my homemade VANILLA!

homemade vanilla

Next up we have recycled plastic Folger's coffee buckets. The crude labels (on blue painter's tape) are self explanatory! Since then we now get Maxwell House coffee because my husband prefers it. However, their containers are squarish. I don't like them nearly as much as these! It takes several times to clean the coffee smell out of these.

tea bags and oyster crackers (they are in a plastic bag)

Now for my favorite find! We seem to go through a lot of grated cheese! Nathan likes it on his popcorn; and, of course, we use it every time we have spaghetti and meat sauce/meatballs. Love that the lid has two sides--one with a few large holes it in, and the other side has a large open section--kind of like a spice bottle lid, except it's a larger lid with larger holes. I've used them for Grape Nuts cereal (to sprinkle on yogurt, ice cream), Panko bread crumbs, sugar, coarse salt, corn starch, cornmeal (since I use it every time I make artisan bread. I sprinkle it on the wooden peel) and cinnamon/sugar! I can think of even more things! I want to get herbs in bulk from the local co-op, and they're perfect for that--dill, parsley, etc.

Panko bread crumbs, coarse salt, cinnamon/sugar, sugar

We LOVE to grind our own peppercorns. When we got married, we got an expensive set of salt and pepper grinder shakers. Well after several years, they fell apart. Then I discovered that you can find these in the grocery stores. BUT some of them are NOT refillable! Who wants that?! I think one that I bought was $4.50! Then I found this one at Big Lots for $1.00! It IS refillable! So I decided to soak the label off and now it's a nice, refillable pepper shaker!

I hope you found some of these recycling/reusing ideas helpful! Until next time...

I have some vanilla beans kicking around. How old can they be? Meanwhile, I don't like to use artificial vanilla AND I don't like to pay for real vanilla. I need work on making my own! Thanks for the inspiration!